


half-sick of shadows

by LonelyLavenderBones



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Ghost finger-banging, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Character Death, POV First Person, Sexual inexperience due to social norms and societal expectations, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Fingering, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-12 22:06:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21233312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonelyLavenderBones/pseuds/LonelyLavenderBones
Summary: Rey has been living alone for so long that the days have begun to run together. Every night she spends waiting for her parents to return, she is visited by a spirit with her former fiance's face.Ben wants her to come with him. To where, she doesn't know. She just knows if she follows, she'll never be able to come back home.





	half-sick of shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarkKnightDarkSide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkKnightDarkSide/gifts).

> This is for DarkKnightDarkSide! They gave me the lovely prompt of a Horror Movie AU with either my choice of movie or a few tropes. To prevent spoiling the fic, I'll reveal my movie inspirations below. 
> 
> I'm not too good with super scary, so I went more psychological and atmospheric. The only real 'death' is the referenced ghost's death. Hopefully, you like it! It was fun to write!

_My heart is like a haunted house_  
_There's things in there that scream and shout_  
_ They make their music in the night_  
_ Wish I could find a way to let them out_

\- Florence + the Machine,  
_Haunted House_

☽ ◦ ◯ ◦ ☾

Moths dance around the light of my lamp, casting a fluttering shadow show on the faded wallpaper as they kiss the hot glass briefly before flinching away only to be drawn back to the flame once more.

Watching them has become a nightly routine as I find a bit of comradery with my nocturnal friends. I sit at my desk, leafing over old letters and occasionally scribble something down in my journal just to make reference that I am still here. It isn’t a lively existence as I’ve been alone for quite some time. Beyond a lonesome rat or two that I’ve brushed out of the larder with a broom, it’s just me and my little nightly visitors living in my home.

Until my parents return, of course.

They left in the spring when the dogwoods were in bloom and I’ve been waiting for them to return. Mother needs the fresh mountain air of the Rockies for her health, but it is just for the season. She looked so poorly when she left; her chestnut hair muted with gray and hazel eyes listless.

Miss Holdo, a local spinster, and a family friend stayed for a short time after they left as our home is far from the nearest town as they didn’t want me to spend all that time alone. Ironically, a few weeks after they departed, I too became ill and she was kind enough to tend to me until one day I woke after nightfall and she wasn’t here.

I think I must have seemed hopeless, so she left rather than risk being quarantined. It hurt, waking up alone and confused with fever, but I don’t know if I can blame the woman. There was news of a strain of influenza that was taking down good, healthy men in days and sometimes even in hours. Soldiers, even, on bases ready to get shipped off to Europe to die on the Western front. Death was all but ensured if that was what I had.

The first few days of my malady is a blur of delirium and difficulty breathing that eventually passed. 

I remember calling for my man, Ben, but he never came. It was foolish fevered begging, but still, Miss Holdo kindly reassured me that he would come soon to comfort me even though she knew well that he never would.

For whatever reason, I remember him being there just for a moment. It was an impossible sight, but in that moment I found relief. Right over Miss Holdo’s shoulder as she dabbed the sweat from my brow with a chilled cloth, I saw him. His eyes of warm amber and a crooked grin on his lips…

‘_Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me…_’

I think he mouthed a bit of Alfred Tennyson. Ben always loved Tennyson. He would fold me in his arms and with his warm breath against my neck, and he would press kisses up my neck, murmuring a line or a stanza between each peppered peck. 

He stood there, just out of reach, and he was beautiful. Just as I remembered when he kissed me underneath the dogwood blossoms for the last time.

Besides for the shrapnel in his forehead.

He hadn’t had that before. 

I still get feverish and fatigued, but it lasts only through the daylight hours. The chill of the nighttime air brings relief to my lungs, and there’s enough food in the larder to last me until my parents come back. 

Any day now, they’ll be back.

This is nothing.

I know all about waiting.

When America entered the war, Ben volunteered as soon as he could. It was the War to End All Wars and Benjamin Solo wasn’t going to wait idly by to be drafted. Only cowards would wait, he insisted, and he was no coward. I never thought that he was, but he had a gentleness to him, a softness that his father had tried to knock out of him at a young age.

He never was able to, and I was glad for it.

When Ben went away, that’s when my apathy for waiting began. We were going to get married once he returned from the war. I wanted to go to the courthouse and get married before he was shipped off, but he insisted on waiting.

He didn’t want us to spend our first months of marriage parted which I suppose was sweet proposal, but if we had gone I would have at least had his name. Which, I admit, would have been little addition than the letters he left behind.

We could go up to Niagara and see the falls, he insisted. He’d even go over the falls in a barrel for making me wait for so long to make an honest man out of him. The image of my tall Ben crammed into a barrel made me laugh even as I wanted to beg him not to go.

Pride stopped me from being _that_ girl. The girl who sniffles to get her way, who cries prettily with a trembling lip and rolling tears. When it came down to it, I thought it would be weak and petulant to plead with him not to go. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have clung to him, tried to convince him to stay with me. It might not have done any good, but at least I could say that I tried.

‘Promise me you’ll come back?’ I had asked, unable to hide my tears even with hope at the edge of my voice.

His answer was a deep kiss, and the heat behind it was as binding as any promise could be.

I used to wonder what went on in the moths’ little minds to defy all reason and fly into a flame, determined to be so near to the light that would set them ablaze.

When the telegram came, silly little questions like that that didn’t matter to me anymore.

Other things are drawn to light.

Like a bullet to the embers of a coward’s cigarette lit just in sight of the enemy, lifted right above the mouth of the trench. Darkness meant ceasefire, safety in the darkness of the fields. Both sides blind, it gave them hours to regroup and rest in the pits before another day of endless battle.

It was just a speck, a flick of light, but even the most minuscule flame can draw attention when it’s submerged in the darkness of night.

A dozen bullets flew and not one hit the bastard that lit the damned cigarette. No, instead, my Ben leapt for him, trying to tackle him down into the trench before the Austrians could see the pinprick of flame. The man was looking for an easy way out of the war, a bullet through the hand and an honorable discharge.

Ben Solo was no coward, but he never needed to prove that to me. I don’t know who exactly he was proving himself to. Perhaps, I think, he thought he was proving himself to his father, to prove his manhood. To prove that he was a hero.

But I didn’t need a hero.

I didn’t need a man who would throw his life away on another man’s hand. 

I needed Ben.

I still need Ben.

There’s an ache in my heart that won’t go away. Sometimes it hurts so badly that it’s like someone has hollowed the heart from my chest so that there’s nothing left but emptiness and aching. Sometimes it’s faint enough that I forget for a moment that he’s gone, but it only takes the sound of pen on paper or the smell of dogwood blossoms rolling on the breeze to remind me of his absence.

One of my moths flutter off towards the window and my eye is drawn to the soft ticking of the clock on the wall.

It’s nearly midnight.

A chill runs up my spine as the sound of the old stairs creaking just down the hall drowns breaks the quiet solitude of my home.

As it has every night since I woke alone in this place.

I always forget.

I don’t know how or why I forget, but I do. It’s like when you wake from a nightmare that was so terrible, but somehow you manage to roll back over and go back to sleep, forgetting that you were ever frightened.

I think it’s my illness. Sometimes it makes it so hard to think, to remember. Days and nights run together, and I’m left wondering how long I’ve been alone.

Perhaps I’m just going mad.

Or I’m only dreaming.

I hope I’m only dreaming.

The creaking stops as he reaches the top of the stairs and by the soft footsteps on the hardwood floor, I know he’s coming.

Just as he always does.

As the footsteps grow louder, more solid I feel a scream forming in my throat, but I swallow it.

The sounds stop just outside the door of my bedroom and I turn in my desk, watching expectantly as the door opens ever so slightly, and I see a pale hand on the brass knob. As the heavy door opens all the way, ever so slowly as the hinges cry in protest, he extends his other hand towards me.

Please, let me be dreaming.

It’s Ben, but it isn’t. Ben was all warmth and amenity, an open book no matter he might try to hide what he was feeling from time to time. 

This man has aloofness rolling off of him in waves making his face seem sharper, colder. He’s also paler than Ben, but he has all the same moles and freckles. I know Ben’s skin as well as any astronomer knows the constellations in the night sky. If it were not for the expressionless mask that he seemed to wear, I might have thought he was Ben.

I wouldn’t dread midnight like I do if he was.

‘Rey.’

My name falls from his lips in a deep baritone that makes my eyes prick with tears. He sounds just like him, and it isn’t fair. The faintest smell of pine and tobacco smoke from the door, and I want to fall into him. I want to feel Ben’s embrace as he pulls me into his massive arms, to hear the sound of his even breathing as his chest rises and falls, to place a kiss on every mole on his face.

Everything about him is temptation, and he wants me to follow him somewhere.

Something in me whispers, _If you go with him, you won’t come back. _

His dark eyes burn with an expectancy as he remains in the door with his arm stretched towards me, beckoning me to take it.

‘N-No,’ I reply, trying to sound pointed and sure of myself. The word comes out in a fumbling fail and I’m left sitting at my writing desk with my back straight and my chin held high as my hands tremble. There’s an urge to stand and go to him, and I don’t know how many more nights I can spend fighting against that pull.

It could be tonight.

‘You’re holding on so tightly. Don’t you think it’s time to let go?’ For the first time, there’s the slightest hint of sympathy in his velvet voice and his face softens just a touch, and for a moment he looks almost like my Ben. 

I’m shaking my head fervently before even finishes speaking, but I don’t really understand his question. He often asks questions like this. Vague questions about how I’m holding onto something that’s preventing me from going with him. Questions that don't make sense, but instead make my head ache when I try to think of a proper answer or fumble for a question of my own.

‘Stop this!’ I bark out my demand as I find my footing. Rising, the soles of my feet hit the cold wood floor beneath me as heat meets the hollow pain in my chest. It’s been so long since I’ve met another soul, yet night after night he returns.

I hate him for it.

Why should he be the one to return to me, just a shade of a memory? Why not my parents? Why not Miss Holdo? Why not any friend I had before the world began to go mad with war and disease?

Why couldn’t he just be my Ben?

Out of scores of people who could come to me, it was just him. This mystery haunting my home.

‘Tell me what you want,’ I ask in a breathy shudder, my shoulders tensing as struggle not to set my jaw. The fire is still lit within me, but it also ignites my grief and the loneliness that accompanies it. Looking back, this is the first time I remember confronting him. ‘You come night after night, hand extended asking me to go where I cannot follow. Why?’

He takes a long, slow stride into the room approaching me like an animal that might bite. I certainly could as I was a scrappy little thing in my youth, but I don’t think it would do much to bite a specter. What can hurt the dead?

In the doorway, he was incased in the darkness of the hall, but in the dim light of the lamp I can see him a little more clearly. His features seemed to have softened in the lamplight, but there is still a gauntness to him that marks him as otherworldly. The mask begins to crack and he’s looking at me with pity.

Why should he pity me? Perhaps I should pity him. He’s the one haunting a house night after night with a face that isn’t his own.

Finally, at least, this dream is moving forward. A change to the routine that isn’t closing my eyes as tightly as I can, willing him away only to awaken the next evening for the events to act out again.

It’s a new step to this forsaken waltz I’ve found myself stumbling through, but I’ve always found that novelty is better than staying stagnant.

‘You’ve called me here,’ he speaks as if I should have known the answer to my own question, honeyed and coaxing. ‘You need me, so I’ve come. You’re so lonely, Rey. Alone here, waiting for no one.’

‘I don’t need you. I don’t know what you are. A demon, a-a nightmare! My mind just falling to pieces…’ I bring a hand to cover my forehead, clinching my fingers over my brow as close my eyes tightly. Insanity seems the likely candidate, but I’ve never known a madwoman to actually know that she was going mad.

‘You don’t recognize me?’ My eyes snap open at his words, meeting his eyes. They shine like obsidian and suddenly, I feel anchored to his gaze. 

‘Stop.’ I want to scream, but the word comes out as a fervent whimper instead.

‘Rey, say my name.’ He closes the distance between us and cups my face with his hand, stroking the edge of my cheekbone with his thumb.

‘Stop _it._’ His touch is so frigid that I feel goosebumps begin to rise on my flesh, starting at the back of my neck before raising on my arms and legs. Even my nipples tighten painfully beneath my thin nightgown. I don’t flinch away from the cold, instead I’m leaning into his palm. It’s unconscious, but, nonetheless, I am. ‘You’re not him. You can’t be…’

I can see the trench in my mind’s eye. It’s muddy and dark, and Ben is dressed in army green with his hair cropped short to meet the military’s standard. It happens so quickly, the click of the lighter, him tossing his massive form at the coward, and then the resounding chorus of gunfire breaking the silence of the night.

Ben is gone.

Ben was a dutiful son and died a hero. My Ben is in heaven as he deserves to be.

Ben is not haunting me.

I have not denied him night after night for what seems like an endless summer.

Whatever this phantom is, it can’t be—

‘_Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark…_’ Everything begins to tilt sideways. That flame lit in my chest grows cold, doused in ice._ ‘And may there be no sadness of farewell, when I embark.’_

‘Ben…’ My knees give out, but his other arm snakes around my waist, keeping me upright as his lips pull into a crooked smile. ‘_Oh, Ben…_’

In an instant his lips are on mine, our teeth practically crashing as I tangle my fingers into his hair. I cling to him, desperate for his touch no matter how cold he is. We fit together as perfectly as we ever have, and with every fervent stroke and caress we fall back easily into one another.

I’ve been starving for so long, craving him in the darkness of my house. The longer our desperate kiss last, the more bearable the chill gets. Either he is getting warmer, or I am getting cooler, but I find that I don’t care as I tangle my fingers through his hair. The ebony locks are silky between my fingers as I pull myself closer.

Placing his large palms on my rear, he lifts me up as I wrap my legs around his thighs, heat flooding me as I feel the pressure beginning to grow between my legs. I whimper against his lips, my arousal growing so rapidly I don’t think it would take much to push me over the edge. My grief has been chased away with something far more intense, something that has been denied for so long I can hardly recognize it.

Whether it is lust or love, I do not care as it is the first time that I have felt life since he left me with broken promises and letters as a memento of our short time together.

As if sensing my need, a gust of wind sends his letters flying as my lamp goes out on my desk. He places me down on the sturdy wood lifting the hem of my gown up as he trails his fingers slowly up my inner thigh, taking to caressing my long legs.

My fingers loosen from his mane as I open myself for him, trailing his arms from his shoulders down to his exploring hands.

‘Don’t tease,’ I beg as I bring a hand to my breasts, rubbing my nipples that are still chilled from his initial touch. I sigh at how sensitive they’ve become, at how sensitive I’ve become. ‘I need you, Ben.’

‘Patience,’ he murmurs, the smokiness of his tone betraying him.

Of course, he would savor it. He has been waiting for this just as long as I have. Gaining his last name wasn’t the only thing I had wanted before he had been shipped off to Europe. Coupling, it had seemed, would have had to wait until marriage.

‘I’m done waiting,’ I whisper as I reach for his trousers with one hand, still rubbing one of my breasts. He catches my wrist before I can even attempt to unbutton his pants, and he shakes his head softly, tutting in disapproval. ‘You mean to torture me.’

It’s a petulant accusation, but I try to plead with my eyes to make him understand how badly I need this. His only answer is a smirk as he releases my hand, and the rough pull at my undergarments down my thighs followed by the rubbing my clit.

A soft moan escapes my lips as I cleave to him, my nails digging into the fabric of his shirt as his languid pace begins to quicken. With his thumb still relentlessly rubbing. He teases my cunt with a finger, barely penetrating my entrance even as I begin to rock my hips in time with his pace.

‘Have you even touched yourself?’ His lips are at my ear and he gives it a quick nip as he drives his finger in a little farther before finding a spot that I wasn’t even aware I had and caressing it. ‘Waiting for me? Is that why you’re so eager? You’re so tight…’

Another finger joins the caressing and I can’t find my voice to answer. My body eases back as I moan, the noise echoing through the empty house as he kisses my neck. 

And all in an instant, I’m over the edge. I’m falling apart, coming into his palm as I spasm around his fingers.

If that’s what just a couple of fingers can do, what would it feel like to be full of his cock?

What would it feel like to come against his plush mouth?

Just the thought of it nearly sends me back into orbit, as I murmur, ‘Fill me up. Please, Ben.’

‘Come with me.’ This time he’s the one pleading and it takes me a moment to catch his meaning as he pulls his hand away from my cunt.

Still a little dazed, I shake my head.

‘I can’t… My parents…’

They’re coming home any day now…

_Aren’t they? _

He frowns and, I swear, I see tears well in his dark eyes as he leans forward and places a gentle kiss against my forehead. I begin to tremble as his scent begins to fade.

‘Ben, don’t…’

It feels like another goodbye and I don’t think I can take it this time.

‘Please, don’t go. _Please._’

Right before my eyes, he fades away and I’m left with nothing but an empty house and darkness.

The hum of my body and the wetness between my legs is the only proof I have that he was ever here.

☽ ◦ ◯ ◦ ☾

I’m sobbing so hard that I can’t breathe, my fingers tangled in damp grass that is far too high for the season. My throat hurts, raw from my screams as I shudder, glancing around to figure out where I am. A night chill blows at my linen nightgown, making me shiver as my eyes finally find my home.

I’m outside, just feet away from the back porch, but my home is covered in ivy that has overgrown the bricks and the grass is far too high. The house looks antique as the paint on the back porch has all but peeled off and the wood is stained by sun and rain, faded from chestnut to a dull gray.

I don’t know why I’m out here.

How long has it been since my parents left?

They left in the fall when the leaves were changing over the field, an ocean of faded green seeming to slowly catch fire. They were going to the hot springs for their medicinal magic. Mother’s hair was red and curly, streaked with gray, and she wore a pink gown. Father was stout and bald, and he had a kind face.

No, that isn’t right.

It was snowing, the worst storm in years, but they insisted that mother needed the South’s warm shores. For her illness. Her blonde hair was in a tight bun, and she was thin and frail, wrapped in an overlarge wool coat. Father’s expression was stern, foreboding; and his suit had a tear it the elbow, but, then again, he was always in tatters.

No. _Wrong._

I can’t remember.

I can’t remember and I can’t breathe.

I look up at the sky, praying for clarity but all I find is the shining pearl that is the full moon. I stare at it and it stares back, looking straight through me like everyone else is always staring through me. I feel like I’m fading away and moonbeams are raking through me like knives.

‘_I am half-sick of shadows,_’ the words tumble out in a shallow cough as I struggle for another breath.

It’s Tennyson. Ben loves Tennyson.

‘You’re holding on so tightly. Don’t you just want to let go?’ A shadow blocks the moonlight before crouching down to meet me at my eye level. The world around me seems wrong and everything is out of place, but I find comfort the familiarity of his features. 

I can’t breathe.

Like the night Miss Holdo left.

My chest hurt so badly, and I felt like I was drowning, but I could have sworn I had my head above water. I was in bed, so I must have had my head above water, but I was drowning, and my mouth tasted of copper. It happened so fast, the fading away…

His hand is outstretched, and he smells of dogwood blossoms. Tonight, his eyes are the color of cognac and he seems less gaunt. He looks a touch gentler, a touch more like how he used to be.

I take his extended hand, and my breath comes back.

Curling into him, I let him embrace me tightly and I clutch onto him afraid that he’ll disappear as he had before.

Nothing makes sense here, but he does.

‘Come with me,’ he whispers. I press my face against his chest, directly over his heart as I place a tender kiss over it.

I am done waiting, and I won’t have him wait any longer either.

I go with Ben and we leave an empty house behind.

**Author's Note:**

> The movies that inspired this fic were The Others, the Six Sense, and The Haunting. Basically, psychological ghost horror with the element of 'woahhh, they were dead all along!' 
> 
> Also, the Alfred Tennyson lines referenced are from 'Crossing the Bar' and 'The Lady of Shallot.'
> 
> Edit: Remember to get you flu shot so you don't catch the Spanish Flu and die asphyxiating on blood and nastiness while your dead fiance tries to greet you to the other side, but you just haunt your parents' house, so he has to come back night after night to try to convince you to leave and finally he recites Tennyson and fingers you, but you still turn him down until your spirit is so broken that you're really starting to lose it and he is like, 'Hey baby, let's go so I can dick you in heaven' and you're like, 'OK!'
> 
> Edit that was made in 2020: Holy shiiit. Wear a mask and wash your hands. Don't die. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this, you might be into my American gothic vampire fic, [A Devil's Hunger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20242843), still in progress.
> 
> If you like the strange and macabre, I also have a Victorian Frankenstein AU, [The Shores of Lethe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20830172), in progress.
> 
> I'm active on Twitter @womp_rat_fever and I do answer asks over on Tumblr @womp-rat-fever.


End file.
